One Hundred Years of Solitude (Penguin Modern Classics) - Books (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Paperback)

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Customer Reviews of One Hundred Years of Solitude (Penguin Modern Classics)

Peter Green

18th December 2008

Unmagical Realism
Hugely overhyped pile of turgid dross. South American history written as soap opera, and I suppose that is the point of the book, that South American history is a soap opera. But a decent novel should make that point and as a novel should transcend the soap opera format. It is not enough to make the point that the continent is a confused, dreary mess, by writing a book that is itself a confused, dreary mess.

This book never even gets within a country mile of being an engaging novel. The writing and translation are clunky. The characters do not engage the reader - I really could not care less about any of them. Even the character names are needlessly confusing - perhaps Marquez is making what he thinks is a clever point about family inheritance and the recurrence of history. Think again GGM.

The plot is confusing, but can be summed up as follows. Page 91, the liberals are winning the war. Page 92, the Liberals are losing the war. Page 93 the Liberals have won the war. Page 94 the Liberals have lost the war. Page 95 the war is still going on. Repeat ad nauseam. Who cares?

The only good thing about this novel is that it is not as dull as Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game. But then neither is the telephone directory. Forget this drivel, and find someone who can actually write a novel.

Spider Monkey
UK
27th November 2008

One Hundred Years Of Solitude
The best way to describe 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' is as an adult fairy tale. What with flying carpets and people living for over 100 years, to name but two of the fantastical elements of this story, you need to suspend disbelief to get the most from this poetic and rich story. Based around the various generations of the Buendia family this book explores the various lives and exploits of each family member. It has a mixture of events that make for interesting stories in their own right and give the book the feel of a short story collection with the same characters and a loose over arching theme to tie it all together. It took me some time to get used to the style, but once I did I found it to be an engrossing and rewarding read. Well worth a look if you like evocative language and vivid imagery and due to the fantasy elements it reminded me of Salman Rishdies 'Satanic Verses' and if you liked that then this is well worth a try. A strong 4 star book.

OK
Ireland
16th September 2008

The best book I've read
I read this book in about two days, I just couldn't put it down. I cared about the characters, when they were happy I was happy, when they were sad so was I. When I finished the book I spent half an hour looking at the cover, opened it again, started reading and decided I couldn't put myself through all the sad bits again.

A friend who's an English teacher loved it, she read it when she was supervising the mocks. She hated when one of the students needed her attention she didn't want to stop reading.

The only fault this book has is that when I finished it for about six months after any book I started seemed boring. This is my favorite book, I'm still looking for a book better than this but so far none have come close.

Gary
UK
24th March 2008

is the praise for this book excessive????
Rather strangely perhaps i have to say right now that i have yet to finish this book, I've been reading a lot over the last few months, one after the other and then started this and faultered. It is declared on the cover of my copy as 'the best novel in any language of the last fifty years'. How anyone has the belief in their own opinion to say that i have no idea. The whole book, so far, seems to be written like an introducation, where you don't get to meet the characters, you are just told about them. So far actual dialogue seems to be a line per page on average and whilst i agree that it is imaginative and fantastic, it is in that respect rather like watching a carnival: One brightly coloured float after another after another after another. I nearly put this one down, but have continued although it is not because i cant put it down, rather i feel i shouldn't.
However it turns out for me i will i think find these extraordinary claims of its brilliance rather odd.

J. Power
London, UK
2nd November 2007

spectacular but opaque
The fantastical/magical story of the struggles of five proud generations of the Buendia family in a fictional small town deep in the interior of post-independence conflict-torn developing Columbia.

Very readable. The descriptions are rich. The episodes of drama are intense. The characters and events are striking but opaque. Just when it feels that someone or something could get very interesting, when it seems that you could really start getting some novel insight or understanding, the narrative moves on - there is over five generations of family history to cover.

At the end of a session of reading, it feels like waking after an epic dream, or a rainy afternoon watching obscure art house films. You never really enter into the psychologies any of the characters, and, out of a Latin American context, the allegories and historical resonances have no meaning. You are just left with a piece of sustained spectacular theatre.